


Once Upon A Time In November

by haldolhs



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Love, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haldolhs/pseuds/haldolhs
Summary: Love never forgets. Ignores the comic book continuation. Takes place six months after the events of Not Fade Away. Relies heavily on the events of I Will Remember You.





	Once Upon A Time In November

**Author's Note:**

> Written nearly 15 years ago. Cleaned up some of the wilted violets, but my heart still beats purple for these two.

He stands at the cliff’s edge, stares out into the grey dawn and rubs his chilled arms vigorously. Slate waves crash up against the rocky shore fifty feet below. Wind cuts into his exposed flesh and whips his hands and face with salty spray.

It’s a hard place, this edge of the world, but it’s his. A little more than six months ago, this is where he woke to the rising sun, shivering and nameless, his mind blank except for the memory of a young woman.  

He can’t remember her name, although he senses the knowledge is there, buried just beneath the surface of her essence, which saturates his soul. He remembers laying in bed with her wrapped in his arms, feeling contented and safe and so in love he thought his heart might burst from his chest. He remembers her looking up at him, golden hair framing her delicate face, the light catching her eyes and making them sparkle as she smiled.

He remembers her fingers tracing over his chest, above his heart.  _ That’s a good sound. Thump thump. Thump thump. _

_ Angel.  _ This is what she calls him. Borne on her voice in his memory, the word sounds reverent, like a prayer. It’s an endearment, perhaps, but he feels it’s as good a name as any, and that, like this small piece of Irish coastline, it belongs to him.

He doesn’t share his name, not with the neighbors he meets in the hallway outside of his small rooms in Greystones, not with the shopkeepers and farmers for whom he does odd jobs to keep himself fed. He’s afraid if he does, that last little bit of himself, the memory of her, will dim and become meaningless. Instead, he uses a name he found among the shops he passed during his first walk through town. A butcher’s called Doyle’s. He might have been Paddy, or Vincent, or Brady, but this name caught on something within his heart and resonated.

Since the day he woke, he’s made the five mile trek to this outcropping a ritual. He comes everyday just before dawn, stands at the edge of his cliff and watches the sun rise. It’s a place of recovery, he feels. One day soon, he’s sure the sun will come up and reveal what’s missing.

He comes every morning, searching not for himself, but for her. 

Until he finds her, he’s comfortable with Doyle’s dark ambiguity. He can’t be Angel until she bestows the name upon him.

 

#

 

She’d been shopping with Dawn along the sun-streaked Via del Corso when her world suddenly went dark and cold. The bright storefronts and sidewalks crowded with shoppers morphed into a litter-strewn alley crowded with monsters. She sensed their rage, their bloodthirst and hunger for destruction, but the only clear face she saw in the chaos was his. 

Their eyes met, and the tension drained out of his shoulders like the rain rolling off his leather jacket. His dark eyes lit up, and he smiled. 

“I love you,” he said. “I will always love you. Never forget.”

When the stake pierced his heart, she felt it shred through hers. As she died, the world brightening around her, Dawn calling her name, she saw the acceptance and peace in his eyes, and then she watched his beautiful rain-soaked face crumble to ash. 

Spike called half a day later, his words gentle, his voice tired and broken, and told her what she already knew. 

Afterwards, Rome and everything in it lost its luster. She spent a week reassuring Dawn that she was fine, forcing herself to shower and eat, reminding herself to breathe, and then she hugged her sister goodbye and flew to England, back to Giles and out of retirement. She’d been a fool to think she could have a normal life, and an even bigger fool trying to convince herself she wanted one. 

All she’d ever really wanted just for herself was him. 

Her room in Giles’s flat is small. There’s barely enough space for her twin bed and the dresser, but it’s enough. She doesn’t have much anymore, and even if she wanted to, she can’t replace what she’s lost. 

For the past six months, she’s thrown herself into her work. She gets up at the crack of dawn and jogs five miles through Bath’s thick morning fog. Afterwards, she eats a quick breakfast with Giles, and then they’re off to a vigorous day of training slayers. She refuses to take time off despite Giles’s incessant urging. She doesn’t want to travel. As much as she loves them, she doesn’t want to see her friends. She doesn’t want to do anything but work herself to a point where she’s too exhausted to dream.

Her dreams are beautiful. They’re vivid and so tangible she tastes the ice cream melting on his chest, dribbled almost directly over his beating heart. It’s Cookie Dough Fudge Mint Chip, and it’s not nearly as delicious as the underlying scent of his warm skin.

Perhaps she might welcome these dreams if they felt at all surreal, the way dreams do, but these dreams feel more like a memory of some long ago impossible reality. Like something that  _ was. _ When she wakes up, she’s knocked breathless with the blow of loss.

It’s easier not to dream. Exhaustion helps. Except, like the father he’s become, Giles worries too much . . . so much that he insists on having Thanksgiving despite the facts that they’re in England, and he’s very, very British. He’s summoned the gang from the four winds. They’ll be arriving tomorrow. He’s even bought a ricer.

A Giles-mandated holiday started this morning. She sits on her bed, pouting and ignoring his invitation to join him for breakfast. He’s forbid her morning run.  _ You don’t look well, Buffy. The circles beneath your eyes are worrisome, and you’re entirely too thin. Bodies require periods of rest and recuperation. Even yours. _

Her eyes trail to her dresser, a beautiful piece of polished mahogany. On its gleaming top sits a small but ornate pewter urn.

The urn is a gift from Spike.  _ He stopped, Buffy. I saw him throw down his sword and just stand there. Before I could move, one of the horned beasties staked him good and proper. And then, poof! Vanished in a crack of thunder. The whole bloody lot of them. I think he knew somehow that if he . . . _

She gets up and moves to the dresser. The urn feels fragile in her hands. Too impossibly weightless, considering its contents.  _ I held on to them for awhile. His ashes, I thought . . . there was this prophecy, see, and I half expected . . . Well, nevermind the bullocks. Bleeding prophecies. Anyway, I thought . . . I thought it was time to bring him home. _

She sits on the edge of her bed, holds the whisper of what remains, and remembers the name of a small town in Ireland.

_ I thought it was time to bring him home. _

She understands what Spike meant, and she loves him for the sentiment, but she wonders if maybe it isn’t time in the literal sense. 

Time to take him home, and let him go.

 

#

 

He sits up in bed hours before dawn on the morning after Thanksgiving. His heart beats too fast and his pulse bounds as he looks from shadow to blurry shadow. When he rubs his eyes to clear them, his hands come away wet.

He tries to shake loose from his dream, but he still feels her tremble against him, feels the warmth of her breath against his neck, hears the ferocity and heartbreak in her voice as she vows,  _ I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget . . . _

On top of the small television that sits on the bureau, a digital clock stares down another minute with a red glare. Adrenaline fires through his blood, tingles every inch of skin.

Time is not his friend. He needs to hurry.

He scrambles out of bed and shucks on the jeans he left laying on the floor. The scratch of the denim against his skin calms him, somewhat. His mind clears enough to keep him from racing out the door and into the cold November shirtless and barefoot.

Outside, the air stings his lungs as he runs. The dim lights of Greystones fade into the shadows of countryside, and wind burns raw against his face. His heart gallops, pounds so hard against his ribcage he thinks it might explode. Instead of slowing, he runs faster.

_ She’s there. She’s waiting.  _

Except, she isn’t. He bursts around a copse of trees onto the slate top of his cliff, and finds himself alone. The shock of her absence staggers him and he falls, gasping, to his knees.

Everything falls away. The frantic beat of his heart, the cold and the wind, the roar of the crashing surf below . . . all gone. Numb, he sits and waits for the sunrise.

He dozes.

Pale, pink-tinged light seeps beneath his eyelids and cracks them open. The sun hasn’t yet peeked over the watery horizon, but it’s a near thing. A few moments more, and he might have missed the break. He stands, joints creaking, limbs aching from the cold, and steps toward his spot at the cliff’s edge.

Then he feels her. A hum in his blood. Warmth spreading through his chest.

Turning, he sees her walking to the edge of the cliff, just a short distance away. Her blonde hair whips behind her and the wind reddens her cheeks, but she doesn’t flinch against the cold. 

There’s an urn in her hands. 

Afraid he’s caught in the grip of another dream, he stands frozen in place and watches her stop at the edge of the cliff. She raises the urn to her lips. Then she turns toward him, away from the wind, and lifts the lid.

As the first of the ashes catch flight, his legs break from their lock and he runs toward her. She startles at the sudden motion, and her eyes dart from the swirling grey to his face.

The urn tumbles from her hands and hits the rock at her feet with a sharp clang.  He almost feels the breath catch in her throat as her eyes widen. He knows he should pause here, give her a chance to respond, but he’s drawn. He has to go to her, touch her, make sure she’s real.

Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it rips through the months of darkness and gives him back to himself.  “Angel . . .”

His fingers brush the warm curve of her cheek, and she doesn’t crumble. She doesn’t dissipate into the wind. 

He pulls her into his arms and feels the reality of her heartbeat against his own. “Buffy.”


End file.
